re: "Limits on speech" (BP, PostBag, August 11, 2023)
Dear editor,
Eric Bahrt raises an interesting perspective on whether the law of a democratic nation may justly implement "a ban on public Koran burning." His argument does not hold up. The comparison with American Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes's famous dictum that "You can't stand up in a movie theatre and shout 'fire' unless there really is one" is not a valid comparison. Justice Holmes was concerned not with bullying threats of violence from easily offended snowflakes, but with the mayhem that can naturally ensue when people panic.
What Mr Bahrt's argument boils down to is that a threat of violence from some group of zealots inspired by religion, nation, or whatever faith-driven fantasy, is a sufficient reason to deny the right to peaceful free speech. That is not the "slippery slope" Mr Bahrt mentions. It is an open door to banning all speech that offends.
The proper response to faith-driven intimidation is to ensure that those threatened are protected; that is the duty of the state. It is what just governance provides its citizens. Sweden and Denmark would be in the wrong to criminalize the burning of the Koran merely because doing so is deeply offensive to a set of beliefs about sincerely imaged things taken far too seriously by fragile, immature bullies who desperately fear different opinions and critical reasoning.
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on August 13, 2023, under the title "The bigger picture on speech" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2628433/learning-that-counts
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